HORIZONTAL AXIS: CAUSES OF FLEXO PRINT DEFECTS

On this grid, printing defects are listed down the left column with their potential causes on the top row.

Breaking Down the Causes of Flexo Printing Defects

Each flexographic printing defect has its own flavor - its own distinctive style and cause. Unfortunately, they sometimes take time and diligent study to solve. That’s the nature of troubleshooting.

Here’s a capsule glance at the 12 defects we see most often, their symptoms, and what may be causing them.

Excessive Dot Gain

Dot gain occurs in every print. In fact, the essence of flexographic printing. But you have a problem when it becomes too much.

Appearance: Images appear darker and sometimes less high-resolution than intended.

Most likely causes: You may simply have too much pressure between the printing sleeve/cylinder/plate and the substrate. Try a “kiss” impression, and if pressure is really the issue, your dots should return to normal. Another likely cause is thick or swollen sleeves or plates from aggressive inks, solvents, and/or cleaning agents. You can avoid swelling by choosing in-the-round (ITR) elastomer sleeves, which are extremely durable and resistant to swelling.

Gear Marks

This is often also called gear chatter or banding. Avoiding this flexo printing defect involves routine press monitoring and maintenance. In short: Machinery wears and breaks down, and it’s critical to keep it up.

Appearance: Alternating lines of light and dark that typically run perpendicular to the web’s direction on the press.

Most likely causes: Gear marks stem from press mechanics and too much pressure. Within those 2 key indicators, however, are a host of other potential issues that could hurt your printing quality. The good news is gear marks (or chatter) are sometimes clearly audible on your press.

Gears wear over time, with teeth eroding away and even breaking. Improperly sized gears won’t mesh correctly and will cause imbalance and bouncing.

Halo

Flexographic printing is a pressure-sensitive process. Fittingly, the halo effect is one of 9 common flexo printing defects we recognize with pressure as a likely cause.

Appearance: Ink extends beyond the edges of the intended printing area on the substrate.

Most likely causes: Too much pressure pushes ink out because it has no other place to go. Irregular pressure could be apparent if the severity of the halo differs from one location to another on the substrate. Lower and otherwise adjust the pressure from the print cylinder to the substrate as a possible solution.

Feathering

While too much pressure also predominantly causes this flexo defect, there could be a host of other sub-issues making your prints look unprofessional.

Appearance: Ink extends beyond the intended printing area to create uneven edges, which look quite like the hairlike projections of a bird’s feather.

Most likely causes: Ink builds up around dots and inadvertently increases the printing surface area. You could be experiencing too much pressure between the print cylinder and the substrate or between the anilox and print cylinder earlier in the process.

This flexo printing defect is no delicious confectionery treat. It’s an aggravating and potentially expensive problem to experience.

Appearance: Screen dots come out slurred and distorted with blank or semi-blank spaces in the middle. They look like lopsided doughnuts.

Most likely causes: While pressure is another potential root cause of doughnuts, the most likely culprit is actually cylinder or plate swelling. Aggressive inks and solvents can wreak havoc with printing products, causing them to swell and distort to, in turn, make images nearly unrecognizable. Switching to more solvent-resistant, direct-laser engraved (DLE) ITR elastomer sleeves is a potential solution.

Skip Out

Your ink must wet out completely on the substrate (in essence, excellent ink transfer) Press mechanics play a vital role in that equation. If you have wobbling, in particular, parts of the printing form will contact the substrate unevenly. But you may also be experiencing other issues from ink composition to thorough maintenance and cleaning.

Appearance: Prints come out with sections that are either too light or missing entirely.

Most likely causes: Even seemingly the smallest resonant vibrations and other issues with press mechanics can impact how well the print cylinder contacts the substrate. Any unintended movement of press components can easily cause skipout.

Other potential causes:

High or low areas on the image carrier, bent shafts, or out-of-round components

Mottled Image

This flexographic defect plagues package printing that requires a lot of solid color imagery. Essentially, in these cases, ink is not wetting out fully on the substrate.

Appearance: Printed areas intended to have solid color have noticeable unevenness in print density and shade/hue variations. This appears bumpy and has the visual consistency of an orange peel.

Most likely causes: Poor ink transfer between the anilox, image carrier, and substrate are causing variations in print density. This often begins with selecting an anilox with the proper cell count/cell volume and making sure all ink-transferring elements on your press are clean.

Bridging/Filling-In

Although these are technically separate, these 2 similar flexo printing defects can be considered as one. Basically, a variety of factors could be allowing too much ink on the image carrier.

Appearance: Letters or intricate areas within graphics bleed together for a low-quality, low-resolution image. In bridging, closely spaced design elements connect with each other irregularly. In filling in, excess ink accumulation fills in spaces that weren’t supposed to be printed.

Most likely causes: Pressure and press mechanics could easily push ink where it doesn’t belong. Lighten the load on the substrate with a “kiss” impression.